Apparently a first outbreak of HSV can be quite painful, especially if you catch it later in life. The whole herpes family has the same basic profile in that respect, and people may be familiar with it from its most well known member - chicken pox. Caught in childhood, any of the herpes family tends to have mild initial symptoms, stays with you for life, and can lead to future outbreaks (chicken pox is weird in that it rarely re-manifests the same way, but future outbreaks are called "shingles" which is the same virus popping back up. Someone with shingles can spread chicken pox to others). Caught in adulthood though, an initial outbreak can be very painful and even dangerous, often accompanied with a high fever, so medical care is often recommended for the first outbreak, both for treatment and diagnosis. Males tend to suffer worse than females for no known reason I can find, it's just statistical data observed. I don't think anyone even has a theory as to why that is the case. But later outbreaks tend to be less severe than the first one.

Every now and then I still run across someone who thinks they ought to stay in a bad relationship because they have herpes and are afraid nobody else will want them. I find this so depressing. Even if you have something far more dangerous, you can usually find other people and better options, but with herpes you have huge options. Lots of people will accept the risk of a partner with herpes. So, while I certainly agree that not having herpes is preferable, it really isn't generally the end of the world if you get it. And with HSV-1, it's so prevalent that even if you limit your dating pool to only people who have it, you have a huge dating pool to date from.